Welcome to Elizabeth Olsen Source: your best source for all things related to Elizabeth Olsen. Elizabeth's breakthrough came in 2011 when she starred in critically-acclaimed movies Martha Marcy May Marlene and Silent House. She made her name in indie movies until her role in 2014 blockbuster Godzilla and then as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff in Marvel's Avengersand Captain America movies. Elizabeth starred in and was an Executive Producer for Facebook Watch's "Sorry For Your Loss". She is currently starring in WandaVision, the first Marvel TV Series on Disney+. She will also be in Marvel's Dr. Strange sequel and hopefully we'll see another indie movie from her! Enjoy the many photos(including lots of exclusives!), articles, and videos on our site!
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Videos: So Many “WandaVision” Interviews!

I decided to just post them in groups rather than one at a time but it is a bit overwhelming. lol There are more in previous posts. Enjoy!!


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January 20 2021
Press: 17 “WandaVision” Behind-The-Scenes Facts Elizabeth Olsen And Paul Bettany Just Revealed

“I thought it was perfect for television, and a very original idea that made me excited.”

BUZZFEED: To celebrate the highly anticipated release of WandaVision, we sat down with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany to chat about the first two episodes and what it was like putting Wanda and Vision in this sitcom setting.

Here’s everything we learned:

? There are spoilers ahead for the first two episodes of WandaVision. So, if you haven’t watched them yet, you might want to bookmark this for later. ?

1. First, Paul Bettany found out about WandaVision right after Vision died in Infinity War. In fact, Paul thought he was getting called into Marvel because he was getting fired, not because they wanted to pitch him a show.


“I looked at my wife and I went, ‘I think I’m getting the can.’ I was very nervous as I go over there. I wanted everybody to feel comfortable and not feel icky about the whole thing, because I thought they were going to be gentlemen, and just look me in the face and say, ‘It’s over,'” Paul explained. “So I went in, I said, ‘Look, there’s just absolutely no hard feelings. It’s been a great run. Thank you so much.’ And they were like, ‘Are you quitting?’ And I went, ‘No, aren’t you firing me?’ And they went, ‘No, we were gonna pitch you a TV show.’ That’s how I found out.”

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January 17 2021
Press: How ‘WandaVision’ Star Elizabeth Olsen Transformed Her Performance For Every Genre-Bending Episode

 

VARIETY: Elizabeth Olsen’s big-screen portrayal of Marvel’s Scarlett Witch led the franchise’s foray onto Disney Plus with the actor’s starring role for the small-screen series “WandaVision.”

The spinoff sees Olsen reprising her character alongside Paul Bettany’s Vision, as the duo is seemingly stuck inside various classic sitcoms, seemingly unaware as to how they got there or why. Each episode jumps into a new decade stuffed with sitcom-centric characters, clothes and gags. But the real treat is how Olsen seamlessly leaps from Mary Tyler Moore housewife to “Brady Bunch” channeling lead.

Here, Variety talks with Olsen to breakdown her process of decade leaping acting, and uncover everything she learned at the “sitcom bootcamp.”

How soon after shooting ‘Endgame’ did Marvel reveal they wanted to make a TV show about Wanda and Vision?

“Infinity War” had just come out and we were picking up what we didn’t film for “Endgame” because filmed them at the same time. I was in LA and Kevin Feige asked me to come in for a meeting. He and Louis D’Esposito let me know that Disney Plus was launching — and they’re giving Marvel the opportunity to bring some of the MCU onto the streaming service. That kind of freaked me out because I’m so used to these characters being on huge group experiences. To think about these characters being morphed to a small TV screen kind of freaked me out, because they’re larger than life characters; they’re superheroes. So that was intimidating, but that’s when Kevin told me his nucleus of the idea [for “WandaVision”]. They wanted to tell the story of Wanda and Vision living in the suburbs, through the guise of American sitcoms and have this “Twilight Zone-y” aspect to it. I thought that was awesome. I was excited by that and intimidated. I’m used to being able to dissolve into an ensemble in these movies. It’s kind of scary to step up in that way, but most things that are scary are worth it.

I understand that you went through a kind of sitcom boot camp prior to shooting, what specific things did you pick up doing that?

We really tried to make everything very era-specific. For me [it was about] just trusting the hair; the makeup; the costumes; Jess Hall, our [director of photography], with his lenses and his lighting. I was responsible for my voice, my diction, my posture and moving through space. It’s all the geeky things like, what part of your voice are women speaking from? What is the rhythm and the pattern and the diction of the language of speech? It’s getting into that mode, which isn’t specific to the time it’s specific to the sitcoms of the time. Which was really fun, because it’s not a grounded thing. It’s something that you’re kind of allowing yourself to send up, which you feels wrong as an actor, but feel so good.

What was the difference between what you did the ’50s, versus when you were in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s?

The ’70s women were allowed — it was almost like there is was a relaxation of women and social behavior, and so that would affect their voices and the tone that they can take. Instead of it being kind of a higher and level [like in the ’50s]. The ’70s, even though it’s this really strange “Brady Bunch” aspirational time in sitcom land, women were able to have a bit more control, something that grounded them a bit more in their voice. Then as we got into the ’80s, there were the teachable moments, and how sincere everything was, that was really funny. And then as we move into the arts and into the ’00s and the 2010s, the sitcom becomes really cynical. The humor, like “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Modern Family” becomes incredibly cynical. And that’s what we found comforting for whatever reason as a society.

It was fun when we were in this boot camp to not only chart the physical changes, as tools, but to also [discover] what comedy was for that time. “Rosemary’s Baby” is a film and “Brady Bunch” is on television, it doesn’t make any sense to me. But for whatever reason, that’s what that’s what the consumer was watching at home.

How do you keep a hold on who Wanda is with such a wide range of experience of literal places that she’s in and the story she’s telling?

You just trust the writing. This character — her core, central life is the life experience we’ve watched her have through the films. It’s a lot of trauma, processing and resenting of her own abilities and her powers. We’re just putting a shade or cloth over that. [“WandaVision”] is her trying to not be found out in the suburbs, but she’s also in a sitcom. So she’s playing the part as best she can, as well. It’s not the exact, same thread from Ultron. This woman is doing the best she can in this sitcom.

The thing that was fun for me as an actor in the show was when the sitcom and what we know of the MCU [came together] — the tension that’s pulled between the two of them. You’re just kind of peeling away and revealing bits, but you’re not revealing everything. Living in that tension throughout this whole series was my playground.

This shows Wanda in a way that she never was in the movies. And for the first time, she’s being written largely by women, how has that affected the character?

This whole show feels very female. And in a really guttural, pelvic floor way. I told Kathryn [Hahn] that she was the pelvic floor of our show. Because she’s just such a solid person in who she is and what she brings. I do feel that in our show and in the way we tell our story.

I don’t want to take away from all the men that were on our show, but we did have this very feminine energy of large collaboration, large teamwork, lots of dialogue, lots of open communication, lots of feedback. Which I think, generally speaking, one would say maybe is more feminine and masculine, which is a complete generalization [and] I know that.

But that was the tone of our show. And that is how we always worked through our days and how we worked through a year of working. It was 110 days of a shoot, I think. We always had that open communication dialogue from the from the boot camp until our last days on set to even in post-production.

“WandaVision” streams new episodes Fridays on Disney Plus.

January 17 2021
Press/Video: Elizabeth Olsen Confirms that Wanda Still Has a Sokovian Accent (& Explains Why You Don’t Hear It)

 

COLLIDER: When we first met Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff in Avengers: Age of Ultron (after the Captain America: The Winter Soldier tease), she had a pretty heavy Sokovian accent. After all, Wanda and her twin brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor Johnson) grew up there. However, when we reunite with the character in Avengers: Infinity War, that accent is gone!

While making the press rounds for Infinity War back in 2018, Wanda’s vanishing accent was a mighty hot topic of conversation with Joe and Anthony Russo explaining that they intentionally stripped Wanda of her accent for two main reasons:

“One is you’ll notice at the beginning of Civil War that Black Widow is training her to be a spy, and two is she’s been on the run, and one of the most distinguishing characteristics that she has is her accent.”

That reasoning does make enough sense, but because most of Wanda’s scenes in Infinity War are just with Vision (Paul Bettany), one could assume what they really meant was, “We just decided to ditch it!” But, on a recent episode of Collider Ladies Night, Olsen actually confirmed that that’s not the case at all. Wanda’s accent disappeared with purpose and also – it’s not totally gone. Here’s how she put it:

“So, the Sokovia accent was created by me and Aaron and our dialect coach because it’s a fake country and we could find different sources of Slavic sounds. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t sound Russian because Black Widow speaks Russian, and so we just needed to sound more like Slovakian. So we created these sound changes that worked for Aaron’s British accent going to Slovakia basically and my American accent so that we sounded related. And then all of a sudden, all these different characters had to speak it in different films. [Laughs] So the Sokovian accent took a lot of time. It hasn’t gone anywhere. There have been reasons for everything. It lightened up when she started living in the States, and in WandaVision she is playing the role of being in an American sitcom and so it’s not gone. It is absolutely still there.”

Does this mean we could see (hear?) the return of Wanda’s Sokovian accent? This tease from Olsen is making me think that’s it’s a real possibility! Olsen did also tell us that Wanda is essentially a blank slate at the beginning of WandaVision and that “the show is what starts to inform the characters of other things as it keeps going.” Maybe one of those “other things” will be her Sokovian accent.

 

January 17 2021
Press/Video: “WandaVision”- Elizabeth Olsen On Scarlet Witch’s Family and Evolution

COMICBOOK.COM: WandaVision is going to take a deeper look at its titular characters, Wanda Maximoff and The Vision, than the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done to this point. The characters have appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and one went on for Avengers: Endgame. Despite so many appearances by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in these roles, audiences have barely “scratched the surface” on these characters according to WandaVision director Matt Shakman. Now, Olsen has opened up about what some extra time with and evolution of Wanda Maximoff will mean for the Marvel character.

“I know what it means,” Olsen told Comicbook.com in the interview seen in the video above, responding to what it means for Wanda to become a full-on Scarlet Witch. “I do think it is, it’s almost like it’s when I say coming of age story for her, it’s more like coming up of a woman age story. Like you know, you start to come to terms with your past and who you are and take accountability for things and kind of coming to terms with yourself. I’ll say.”

Wanda’s lineage in Marvel Comics adds more importance to her in the Marvel Universe, in addition to being a powerful and integral character on her own. In the books, she is the daughter of X-Men legend Magneto and sister to Quicksilver, with only one of those relationships ringing true in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so far. As for whether or not those family ties will become an issue, “I don’t know,” Olsen says, simply.

Still, family is definitely going to be an issue for Wanda, as the character will be welcoming her own children to the world in WandaVision. “I think as much as I can understand parenting you would do anything to protect your family and your children,” Olsen says. “I think what it does bring up for her is this reflection of her own experiences from when she was a child and her you know, throughout her family.” It’s a “tough background,” as Olsen calls it, one which has seen Wanda Maximoff lose just about everyone she as loved throughout her MCU tenure (her parents, her brother, her Vision).

Not only did Olsen channel the evolution of Wanda’s tragic story, she also had to do so under a guise of existing in a sitcom which pays honest homage to different eras of such television shows. “It was so nerve-racking and there was a lot of adrenaline, a lot of quick changes, and it totally confused my brain,” Olsen said of shooting in front of a live audience. “I was really grateful when we added the fourth wall!” It took her a minute to understand how to not perform for the audience but feed off of their energy. “I think it was an amalgamation of Mary Tyler Moore and Elizabeth Montgomery and I think I threw in some Lucy in the 70s because there was a good bit of physical comedy.”

Are you excited for WandaVision? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

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WandaVision premieres its first two episodes on Disney+ this Friday.

January 13 2021